


The Last of the Sun

by Ariadne_Dai



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls I
Genre: (Insofar as Possible), Canon Compliant, Canon Trans Character, Canon-Typical Decline of a Great Empire, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Difficult Parental Relationships, Difficult Trans Feelings, Disabled Character, F/F, Gen, Gwyndolin Did Nothing Wrong, Major character death - Freeform, Original Player Characters, Praise the Sun!, Trans Female Character, Transfeminine Gwyndolin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-31 05:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20787542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariadne_Dai/pseuds/Ariadne_Dai
Summary: She makes moves in secret. She tends to an illusion.  She weighs her choices.She dreams of a new age filled with light.





	The Last of the Sun

A nest of serpents stirs.

Six dark green heads poke out from beneath my white gown. They flick their tongues in the fresh air. I, too, lift my head, swim up to wakefulness from dark oceans of dreaming. My serpents slide comfortingly onto the floor.

Morning.

I brush out my hair. I gather my adornments and lift my crown onto my head.

Then I go put the sun in the sky.

A word from me, a gesture learned from my mother, and the illusion is renewed. An image of my father’s light gazes across fields and towns and castles and citadels for another day. All is bright, save for those dark gardens the Abyss has tried to claim. Mortals and immortals may continue to believe that the Lords watch over them, that a benevolent divine presence remains in this world.

My work has often been praised.

I see no need to attach my name. It is the image that matters, not its artist. Besides, I would fain remain in the shadows. I have had far too long in the light already.

There were temples to me, once. I have let them all wear away.

At my threshold, I give and receive word from to those few who still know me. I dispatch them where they are needed. I tend to my father’s golden city like a grave.

I have made an art of vigil. I brush dust from the flat surface of his tomb, polish it so it shines bright as a mirror. I place fresh lilies where his hands would be, that he might clasp them, all the while knowing that he lies not here, that his body paces and rages mindless a mile below.

I look into that polished surface and imagine I can see his face looking back at me. _Have I done it well, Father? Have I kept your legacy intact?_

Past the gates of my city, the undead howl and drool. They butcher each other with axes and spears and cleavers, thirsting for their lost, putrid humanity. Families shun their own mourned, banish them to our collapsing towns, our cursed lands, and all the while the world sinks into its end. The fire fades.

Unless my efforts bear fruit. Unless my fervent hope is realized.

That one among the undead will be able to do what my father did.

I study and shape the pattern. I search among the dregs of this sad race for possibilities. I wait, and listen to what news is brought me by my faithful, and hope.

There is not much time left.

☉

_Come away from there, boy._

My father’s words. A childhood memory. Painful.

“Come away, boy. That is not for you. That is the women’s magic.”

Strong arms pull me up from where I had been crawling, despite my efforts to stand. I twist, still trying to see. My gaze is pulled back to a huge face. My father’s face, with its gold and white bristles I loved so much to cling to. I cannot get away.

My earliest memories are of this face, and my mother’s, and my sister’s. Of being carried. I was always a sickly child.

They tried so hard to have another child, to replace the traitor.

Perhaps there was only so much light left in the god-king’s seed for me.

He deposits me back in my litter. He grins at me.

“You are Gwyn’s sword. What need have you for petty female fortune-telling?”

I do not answer him. I am thinking of all the times he has tried to teach me the sword. Always his dissatisfaction. When I could not hold up my own body for long without pain, let alone lift the blade.

Instead I watch my mother and my sister perform their magic at the sacred fountain. I watch hungrily, longingly. The waters stream up blue-white under the moonlight. My mother’s fingers move deftly through the stream, and the crowd lets out a sigh. I know that she is seeing the future in the spray, that she will predict for the people the quality of the harvests, the best times to marry. I also know what they do not, that she sees far further than that.

She came from the fire, as Father did. But as a shadow he cast, an altered reflection of his light.

I wonder now what things she knew of the future, and never revealed. I wonder if she saw her own demise. I wonder if that is why she left.

But in that time, such things are still far away. I only know that I have never seen anyone so beautiful. That I want to be where my sister is. On the platform, learning her arts, in a radiant gown beside her.

My hands move silently, repeating the motions they are making.

I do not let Father see.

☉

Another one has appeared.

This one a woman in the swamp-folk’s grey rags, mumbling pyromancies. Brought from a foreign prison by one of Velka’s birds, of all things. I cannot guess what the Sin-Eater's play might be.

Withered, like the worst of them are. Eyes sunken, mind no doubt similarly hollowed. I doubt it will take long for her to fail.

Still, I have maneuvered figures that she might hear my prophecy. They remain in place. A weary man I have steered here speaks. She hears, she understands. She takes the steps up into the dead town. I direct my agents to keep an eye on her, just in case.

It is later that Ileuad comes to the door of one of my secret places. She falls to one knee in her golden armor.

Ileuad is one of mine. One of those who stayed, after all others left. After the golden city began to die. She is one of the few I have allowed to see me in my full splendor. She often comes to me bearing news.

_The root-girl wanders through the town, _she tells me. _She has died many times. She runs blindly from the swords of the dead. Now she struggles with the bull-demon._

I nod. I twist my fingers through the bright spray of the fountain. I stare into its waters and examine possibilities as my mother did, though with less skill. I follow the threads of time as far as I can and search for places to send my knights, gleaning what knowledge I can from Gwyndolins in other threads, though always aware of my limit, the reality that is my own. In so many of those threads, all goes dark. I fear that mine will be the same.

_They always do,_ I say. And it is true.

In most of the threads, there has been a bull-demon up on the wall, or something like him.

Half of those who try to ring the bells never come back from meeting him. They lose their will, and become gibbering corpses, bound to where they fell.

I do not expect this girl-child to be any different.

☉

I wonder if anyone remembers New Londo now.

How the torches glowed yellow and red on the cavern walls. The feasts, with their platters of boar’s meat and golden pitchers of wine. The mortals dancing to the violin strings. Our high table in the merry hall.

The men, with their red beards. The women, with their long lashes, dresses like a field of flowers, and curling hair.

When we drowned them all, we should have known it was the beginning of our end.

☉

I cannot sleep. I am lost in the memory of Mother’s hands, moving in the fountain. The way she looked under the moonlight. The crowd of mortals who gasped and sighed as she drew her magic from the orb above. The song the women sang with her there.

I crawl out of bed, my legs thumping against the floor I crawl to the wall and pull a poleaxe down from above. It clangs against the marble. I use it to brace myself, like a staff.

Bit by bit I proceed from my room, with difficulty the entire way. No guard seems to catch sight of me.

I push myself into a wheeled cart, clicking down the steps to the courtyard, bumping and thumping the whole way down like tossed stones. Finally the whole thing overturns in a heap, and I am in the courtyard, at Mother’s fountain. I push myself up on my staff, and hobble over to the water.

I press my knees against the stone and repeat the movements I saw Mother and Sister making under the moon the previous night. The orb hangs above me again, vast and silver, only a little waned.

And magic happens. The poleaxe glows as if it is being forged, and its tip collapses into a yellow slab of metal. Silver light pours down on me. I can feel it filling up my body, fuller and fuller. The water rises in the fountain, and I see glimpses of people and places I know. I point the staff, and the world shimmers around me. I can make the dark trees turn into our marble hall, into ice, into fire. The world becomes, for a moment, what I want it to be.

And then the water falls back into the pool, and I collapse against the white marble, and my father and mother are coming down the garden path to me, faces aghast.

“Boy,” my father snarls. “I told you to keep far away from the women’s magic. What do you mean by this? Would you rather I put you in your sister’s clothes, and lock you away from all the glories of manhood?”

The words strike the core of me. Something resounds that I was not aware of before. “Yes,” I say eagerly.

I have never before seen my father speechless.

Mother is coming down to stand beside him. “Fool, do you not understand what has just _happened?_” she murmurs. “This child of yours has called down my moon. Not one of my practitioners has managed that. Even Gwynevere. This child is strong with the moon, Gwyn. Perhaps there was something worthwhile left in you after all.”

Father is staring. “But the moon belongs to _women_, and the subtle, and the night.” He shakes his head, disbelieving.

“So it does,” she agrees. “So it does.” There is something knowing about her smile.

I am carried back to bed, with no further words. Something seems to have passed between my mother and father. But for once they are not arguing, not shouting. Only looking to each other again and again.

In the morning, I am awakened by Father’s silver knights.

“Come,” he says, when my litter is brought before him. “We are going on a journey.”

The journey takes days. We leave Lordran behind and ride out past the farthest villages, until we come to a place where the earth is grey and twisted into vast canyons and curling hills. Craters mark its surface. In the distance, I see row after row of pale, enormous trees, like iron bars. They lift me from the carriage and set my palanquin down on the grey soil.

It feels like the end of the world.

“I warred with him here,” Father says, almost idly. He turns to me. “Do you know the one I mean?”

It takes me a moment. “Brother?” I ask. I know not to say his name. Even the books of history do not record it. We chiseled him out of the monuments, as if he had never existed.

But then, for me, he never has.

Father nods. He gazes out at the damaged landscape. “Traitorous wretch. But it was my fault. I raised him to live and breathe war. There was nothing for him under my peace, save to fight me.”

He shakes his head. “I never should have tried to have more sons. Sons, ha! I’m wasted on sons. I should have kept to daughters from the very beginning. Now I understand.”

I look up at him. I do not understand.

He lifts an eyebrow. “Would you not rather be my daughter than my son?”

It takes me a moment to grasp the magnitude of what he is telling me. “Yes,” I answer, heart pounding.

“Then so be it, girl. I will not repeat my mistakes with you.” He raises his sword, tapping my left and right shoulder. “You will be my steward, and my right hand. You will preside over my peace and keep my city. No longer will you be Gwyn’s sword. You will be Gwyn’s shining bow. Gwyndolin.”

_Gwyndolin._

“Now, rise, Gwyndolin.”

I struggle to my feet, clutching at the poles of my palanquin. But in the next moment, I forget my pain. The men are bringing something from the carriage.

It unfolds. It is a long gown like my sister’s. Shining, half-transparent, and white.

It is for me.

Now I ride in a chariot with Father, my white gown and pale hair streaming behind me in the wind. We ride at the head of Father’s armies, the whole vast parade following us like a wedding party. In the villages, the men and women and children fall to their knees and press their skulls to the earth.

Father declares my name. He has them bow to me.

Perhaps some of them are confused by what they see.

I am not confused. I am not afraid, either. I grip the edge of the chariot and grin and let the crowds adore me, tears in my eyes.

I am alive.

☉

I find it difficult to believe she is here.

But there she stands on the wall of the city. The dried-up little root-girl, of all people. Purple-faced as ever, unable to grasp at even foul human substance. I had entertained so many other candidates. Even a group of pilgrims, a party. But one by one, they dropped away.

She may serve my purpose, if I have to make do.

I am not given over to confidence. She is dressed in red Sealer’s robes—fire knows where she found those—but I would have expected her to be carrying a sword by now. A spear. Even a better axe.

No. Just the little woodcutter’s axe she was spotted with back at the shrine, months ago.

The blade must have cracked many times by now. The handle snapped and fallen apart. But again and again she has repaired it. The obsessions of the mad undead.

I do not expect it to aid her against the Dragonslayer and the Eater of Men.

They were real once, Ornstein and Smough, doing the work for me then that they do now. But they grew tired of this place as all the others did. Tired of the illusions. Tired of each other. Tired of trying to go on.

No matter. I had learned enough about them by then to be able to fill in. Homunculi of clay, with their forms, imbued with my image of their minds. Barbarity, in one. Nobility, in the other. I know their every shift of lance, every turn of the hammer. I can puppeteer to the level of their skill.

The difficulty in my search, as ever: to find a true warrior. For to replace Father as sacrifice will mean to kill what is left of him, and he has lost none of his martial skill. Few living could come close, yet I hope for one among the undead.

I would do the task myself, save that the kingdom needs my guiding hand.

If she cannot tame Ornstein and Smough, she will not be able to slay the idle Lords who must be taken out of the way, let alone Father himself. So I test my candidates with death, waiting—waiting! for one to pass the test.

Yet I cannot but dream. She has woken Frampt. I have not had a chance to speak to him in a century. Perhaps I shall go to him when this is over, and we shall celebrate having at last found the warrior we seek.

My scouts and I watch her die again and again and again.

Ileuad reports that she still has not made it into the cathedral. The arrows of my knights pierce her ribs over and over as she climbs the rafters, and she falls into the alleys below. It is a pitiful sight.

Weeks, months go by, with the dead creature reviving again and again in the flame Ileuad keeps. Finally she escapes the arrows and enters through a side window. She blunders around my other knights, and stumbles upon Smough and Ornstein.

Ornstein impales her within moments of entering the room, and Smough’s hammer shatters her ribs and skull against a marble pillar.

I shake my head, and go to search the weave of futures for something better.

☉

_For Lords, the body is a plaything of the mind,_ my mother’s words remind me.

I sit upright on my cot, smooth my skirt over my knees. I recall everything she has taught me. The year of lessons in the cavern under the waterfall. Building my very own sorcerer’s catalyst to channel magic from the sky. Jumping ahead of my sister in all lessons on prophecy. Her hardly seeming to mind.

I raise my staff. I focus on the edge of my body, see it as a shape carved in pure white light.

Motion beneath my skirt. I pull back the fabric. A snake’s head emerges from my hip. The serpent grows longer. It flicks its tongue in the palace air. I look at it and smile, knowing it to be part of me.

I experiment for several weeks. Finally I have four serpents emerging from my body, curling around the bed.

Catching my breath, I let each of them slither onto the floor.

And there it is. Their green, speckled bodies hold me aloft. I am taller than I have ever been before, tall enough to touch the roof of my chamber. The serpents keep me in place.

My old legs dangle unneeded beneath my dress. I ignore them. I shall require longer gowns.

I move forward, and the serpents move with me. They writhe smoothly across the marble floors.

I move through our halls at my own pace, in my own way, not needing to be carried.

And I feel no pain.

☉

“You’re such a child, Lin. You believe every word your parents tell you.”

Quelaag shifts beside me, her pale body sheltering my back. We are both gleaming, exhausted. My serpents coil and uncoil around her smooth legs.

Quelaag teases, almost rakes, a long, sharp fingernail across my breasts. Ordinarily I welcome this kind of touch, but today, I recoil. I am not in the mood. We have returned to our argument again.

“There is no fire that burns stronger without fuel,” I insist stubbornly. “You speak of something impossible.”

“Is that what you think? Or is that just doctrine your father put in your mouth?”

I bite down hard. My serpents snap. “I trust him to know the workings of the world. He made them. ”

“They can be remade. Listen to me, Lin. There was no fire until the dawn of the world. We can light a new one. Maybe your father can’t, but our arts are better than your line’s. If you’d join mother and I at the Circle once in a while, you’d understand that.”

Quelaag’s mother unsettles me. “All fires die, Quelaag. No one can escape from that.”

She eyes me. “Then what will you do to survive? Select a martyr to sacrifice? As the high Lord proposes?”

“Yes.”

“Always so loyal. Your father’s right-hand daughter. Born from his reeking skull.” Her expression condescends, pitying. “You never deign to question it.”

I shift away. “He has been good to me.” My voice is quiet.

“Blood’s sake, Gwyndolin. Don’t you understand? He’s _using_ you. One command from him, a single _word_. And ever after he earns your allegiance. Don’t you see how he stripped the power of command from you? Now he has an obedient daughter instead of a son. So much easier to manage.”

Now I truly pull away. “What I am is my own concern,” I snarl. How _dare_ she? “And so are my loyalties. Beware, lest I remove you from them.”

She is only half contrite. “You would follow your family into any folly, all on the back of a single promise to you.”

“As you yours. Or was it not your mother who devised this mad plan of a new flame?”

She is unmoved. “The difference is, I choose her freely.” Her face softens. “Come and see us do our work. Forget, for once, that you are commanded otherwise.”

I turn my head away. “You will only fail, and make fools of yourselves, or destroy yourself making a thing that should not be. And I do not care to witness either.”

We argue further, again and again down the same well-worn roads. We shout. We say cruel things to each other, things we should not have said. Finally I demand she leave. She leaves. I cross her name out in my mind. We excommunicate each other from our hearts.

When I hear what happened, of the twisting of bodies that took place in Izalith, of the lava pouring over the ancient foundation-stones, of the mass of demons now clawing at us from beneath, I weep. But I shed only a few tears.

When, much later, I connect this tale to another, that an arachnid monster with the face of a girl stalks the blighted town, killing all who show signs of humanity and dragging them back to its lair—when I realize what must be removed from the path of my chosen—I do not shed any.

By that time, my heart has been too long hardened.

☉

He came back. I do not understand.

He never let me see him, which takes some doing. I only saw the wind of his departure, as before.

I came up from the Great Lord’s tomb, where I do my work. Into the false tomb which serves as an entrance hall, its door disguised by illusion.

On what passes for father’s grave were a ring and a scroll.

The ring was the kind spoken of in our earliest annals, a thing of copper with scratched writing.

The scroll I could not help but recognize. It sings of a blade drenched in sunlight.

I know enough to know my brother wielded such a weapon.

He came back. He must have returned to our land when he heard the king was dead and the kingdom dying, to pay his respects.

He still loved him, despite everything.

Yet he spoke not to me. He sent no word.

I hid myself too well.

I am weeping now. Abyss take it all. Why did we have to be such damned fools, every one of us? Why could we have not meant more to each other?

The ring still sits where it was. Perhaps one of my faithful will claim it.

The scroll I have removed to my chamber, to study its workings.

I will keep it with me a while longer.

☉

Ileuad is dead.

Making my rounds unseen, I saw that her fire was out. I stopped where I was on the wall. Illeuad would never abandon her duty. I began to search.

I found her body at the bottom of the elevator shaft. It was lying on the cold marble, near the bottom of the ornamental stair. Her helmet was turned sideways. Her neck had snapped. There was a crack running through her golden armor. One of her legs was twisted beneath her at an unnatural angle. I saw the white of bone.

I looked the corpse. I wondered how long it had taken for her to die.

There could be no question of who had done this.

There was only one in this city whose intentions I did not know.

The shriveled corpse-girl. At lleuad’s last report, she had been acting erratic. Frustrated with her lack of progress against my warriors. Ileuad saw the dullness in her eyes that comes when an undead is about to go hollow.

I could imagine her striking Ileuad in anger. Ileuad would not have let the insult to her honor go unanswered. She would have given chase with her blades.

Perhaps a confrontation took place on the edge of the shaft. Did the knightess, usually so alert, put a foot in the wrong place and fall to her doom?

Or did the root-girl seize her by neck and shoulders, and _push_?

I am unable to move from the body.

Bile rises in me. I have not felt like this since I first learned what humans were.

Did Father and Mother, I wonder, ever find themselves teetering on the edge of the lie? That we were their gods, and they our subjects? Did they fear they would let slip to mortals the truth: that their substance was corroding darkness, hidden by the tiniest veneer of our light? That they were alien to us, opposite, our annihilation, and we had only just in time kept them from knowing this.

As a child, I feared to let them touch me. Now that feeling comes back.

This is what they are, underneath. This madness. This world where they kill and eat each other. Such is their humanity, without us.

I glide invisibly through the city, searching for my quarry. There she is, ascending the great steps.

I am poised behind her. She does not know I am there. She does not even know I exist. I lift an arrow to my bow, bring it nearly to the small of her back. I will kill this disgusting thing again and again until she is hollow, and then I will bury that corpse.

And then what?

I have no other candidates. The world is decaying faster and faster. I have wasted so much time. I need her, if only as a failsafe while I continue my search.

With great reluctance, I put my bow away.

I slither up the steps and study her face. A serious expression. Contrite, even. There is no trace of the dullness of before. Perhaps she regrets what she has done.

She dodges the axes of the sentries at the door and in the main hall, and proceeds on to the battle-chamber. I turn my attention there.

It does not take long for me to kill her again. When she returns from the embers, she does not collapse. She proceeds forward, resolute.

She smiles at the weapons rushing towards her. She nods when, as Smough, I play a familiar trick, and circles around the blow. She lasts longer than she had before.

She continues to die. But she is learning.

I throw all the anger I have at her. Ornstein slips lightning past her overlarge shield and meets her gaze. _Well? _I sneer. _Come. You will never be the chosen, if you cannot do better than that. _I bring Smough’s hammer towards her from behind.

She seems to understand.

Weeks go by. Every day sees her climbing the steps and showing her ruined face in the main hall. She learns to move constantly, to watch over her shoulder for the Dragonslayer’s approach. Finally she lands a killing blow.

He collapses, and I pull his lightning into Smough. She tries to land a blow on the cruel giant, but is unable before the blasts strike her.

_Well? _I demand. _If you would kill, then kill. Do not let me see you unable._

She disappoints me by dying.

Many more weeks pass by. She learns to follow Smough’s rhythms as much as Ornstein’s. She does not ask why the Dragonslayer returns from death again and again. She moves differently from before, and yet she cannot seem to overcome the pair.

One day, without warning, it is over.

She avoids Smough’s lightning, and strikes him in the small of the knee, and he collapses. He vanishes into light and dust.

She has done it.

This creature with her pitiful little axe, this rotting murderer demands my blessings.

I conjure my sister’s image in the royal audience hall, as I have done only a few times before. For others who came this far and fell. Ordinarily I enjoy wearing her face and speaking with her voice. But not today.

I swallow my bile. I tell the girl that she is chosen, that she will prevail against the remaining Lords.

It is all I can do not to bring the cathedral down upon her.

☉

“I do not understand. Why do you have to leave?”

I feel like a child again, asking so desperately. That helpless creature in the litter again, unable to move on my own while the rest of the world turns about me. My sister stands before me, mammoth and beautiful in her long robe, her eyes soft, her mouth a tiny slash down.

She lets out a breath. “I’m tired, Lin. I can’t do this any longer.”

I am defiant. I rise fully on my limbs to approach her eye. “We swore to rule his kingdom in his stead, Verie. To mourn him.”

“And we have. These last thousand years. Now that kingdom is fading.” She tosses her auburn curls. “We’ve done all we can to keep it as he wanted. But we knew he was only buying time. The world is going now. We can no longer help them. We might as well live for our own sake.”

I look out from the balcony, out onto the glowing city, where thousands of mortals go about their lives under my false sun. “Do you know what I see in my visions?” I say quietly.

She shakes her head. “I do not. You were always better at reading the threads than me.”

“The undead come among them again,” I say. And as I speak, I see the shriveled feet moving down those very streets. “The lesser kingdoms break away, and then Lordran itself begins to crumble. The walls are breached. Finally, not even our city is safe. In the towns, only the dead dwell.”

I hold up a hand. “But there is _hope,_ Gwynevere. I have been speaking with Frampt—”

“Not _Frampt_ again—“

“—And he believes another may serve in Father’s place. Once his flame has almost died out. We may preserve them another thousand years, Vere. Or ten. His legacy will _endure_. All we need do is find someone like him—”

She shakes her head. “There is no one like him, Lin. There never will be again. Why do you think so many of the Lords have left?”

She draws closer. “Come with Byrdferth and I. Put down your steward’s staff. We could enjoy the time we have left together.”

For a moment I imagine it. Myself as the Lady of a castle somewhere distant. Reclining on a golden bed and listening to handsome bards sing as my sister braids my hair. The two of us receiving worship as the world greys and dies around us.

I pull my gaze back to the city. “You may choose to leave them,” I say heavily, “but I will not. I am staying here. Do not try to persuade me otherwise.”

She looks at me, serious-faced. She nods. “I will not.”

“Where will you go?” I finally ask. There seems to be little left for either of us to say.

“Thorolund, perhaps. We have many worshippers there.”

“Will you search for Mother?” 

Both of us know how she departed with her lovers in the direction of Carim the day Father told of his plan, before he even entered the flame.

“I will, if I can.”

“I wish you were not going,” I say. “Our rule. The things our family has built here. None of it has to end.”

“Oh, Linnie,” she says. “Sooner or later, everything ends.”

And just as when we were children, she leans down and kisses my forehead, where on other days I wear my crown.

☉

She has found my door.

I feared this might happen. She is not such a fool. Like Ileuad and others before her, she has found one of my tokens. She has earned for herself the right to work for me, if she so chooses.

Or she may cross into my chamber.

If she does, she will die.

I do not intend to let her get anywhere near me.

I speak to her from the other side of the white gate. I ask her to kneel. I warn her not trespass on the Great Lord’s tomb, or her life will be forfeit.

She kneels. She hears and obeys.

I ask if she intends to join my covenant. To bring swift justice to undead in every thread who maim their fellows.

She shakes her head. Her voice is scratchy with disuse. She tells me she is pledged to the service of another.

A relief. I will not have to look upon her again. I bid her to go, and not return.

She departs.

Through my remaining agents, I observe her progress. She consults again and again with Frampt. She has little difficulty dispatching Seath the Scaleless. Good. What a horrible creature, conducting his experiments on kidnapped young women. The world is well rid of him.

The girl goes to Izalith, and drowned New Londo, and the Tomb of the Giants. It is there I lose track of her. She does not emerge for a long time.

I search for other candidates, but I despair. The light grows so dim. My sun is harder and harder to keep in place. The undead outside our walls tear each other apart. No one comes to our city.

Footsteps sound outside my chamber.

The undead girl steps through the white gate to stand before me.

I rise to my full height and condemn her. I transform the chamber into an endless hallway, and pull myself far away from the invader. I call her cursed, blasphemer and worse.

She does not care. She looks around at the walls, smiling. She ambles forward, axe and shield in her hands.

I raise my catalyst, and then my bow. I fire.

Arrows of magic and iron pierce her body in fifty places.

She collapses, dead once more. She disappears into a flicker of light.

It is a moment before I realize I am shaking.

☉

If there was a time to depart, it is now.

She has found her way to the Kiln where Father resides. The cursed kings of New Londo are dead, as is the last remnant of the Witch of Izalith. As for Nito…I do not pretend to understand Nito, but I know he has been removed from consideration.

Yet this horrible girl hesitates. Frampt relates she wavers on the threshold of the Kiln. She has not yet gone to fight the great king.

I would be wise to leave. She has already proven herself adept at picking apart my careful arrangements. It is only a matter of time before she decides to go after me.

But I cannot bring myself to go.

Suppose she were to fall hollow now? Suppose the rekindling never comes to pass? Someone ought to be there, to ensure she reaches her goal by whatever methods necessary.

I close my eyes, and my sight rises. I look upon the golden city I have tried to keep. I alone know how deeply it already lies in shadow.

Why do I stay? Not for Father, as Quelaag thought. No. Once I might have thought so, too.

Now I stand from distance enough to see the whole of him. He was not the shining father of my youth. He was as flawed as any mortal man. I know that now. I do this not for him.

It is only that there was something beautiful here, once, and I will not let it fall to ruin.

There should be mortals who live without fear of the undead, and farms whose fields are full of wheat, and maidens dancing in the firelight. There should be a sun in the sky.

I will build new palaces. I will find my sister and brother, and together we will make new gods. And another kingdom will look out over a thriving land.

I will make everything we built together live again.

Footsteps at my door. I pull myself back to the tomb.

It is her, of course.

The shriveled little root-girl.

She is brimming over with the stuff of humanity. She reeks of it. Yet she has not absorbed it. Her face is still ravaged as any hollow.

She has traded her red for black, a witch’s long coat. It sharpens the red of her pulled-back hair.

She raises her axe.

I cast my spell and fire my bow immediately. But this time she is ready. She rolls out of the way at the last moment.

I catch her before she moves again with a ball of blue-white fire. The magic eats through her shield and consumes her body. She screams. She dies.

A minute passes.

And then she is there again, coming through the door.

Reborn again in the very bonfire I lit to consecrate Father’s tomb.

She rushes toward me again and again. I pull myself back, down the endless hallway I have made. She persists. Again I kill her, but this time she moves faster and escapes more arrows. She is learning.

Closer and closer she comes to me, even as she dies, even as I retreat backward, dodging every projectile I have for her.

My heart is pounding. I have no other trick to try. Most of the magic I learned was bent towards knowledge, illusion. If these arrows are not enough—

All my agents are elsewhere. There is no fountain here to reach for them. There is no one I can call upon—

I see the glove on her left hand flickering. Light fills my sight, purple and red—and I am burning, oh gods, I am burning—I snuff the flame, but it still licks my robes, it melts the floor, it eats at my serpents—I fling myself away, but she is upon me—

Her woodcutter’s axe is raised. And I see what I had not before. The edge is so thin. Sharper than any weapon I have ever seen. Threads of silver gleam. It has been reinforced—how many times over?—with pure titanite.

The axe strikes one, two of my serpents, and I fall. I tumble to the floor. The axe cuts again, into the small of my back. Pain.

She stands above me, framed in my sunlight. I have no strength to alter the room anymore.

“Heretic,” I spit. “Swathed in dark. An eternal curse upon thee.”

She bends over me. Her voice scrapes against her dry throat. “Is that all? I’d hoped for more time to become friends.”

I do not understand what she can possibly mean. I stare up at her.

“Like with Ornstein,” she says. “He taught me that. He taught me what death is. A beautiful dance. A dance where you have to learn the steps over and over until you get it right. You always should to be glad to see them. Your opponents. Your dancing-partners. They have so much to show you. To teach you.”

“The twins and I were very good friends by the end, I think. I think you must have been their friend, too. I have looked forward to it, you know. Dancing with you.”

I understand now. She does not hold on to her humanity. She has never been lucid for long. This is the madness of the undead. A madness I cultivated as she slew her way through the remnants of our pantheon.

“You’re so beautiful,” she says, passing her axe over my bleeding stumps. “You remade yourself. You should know I remade myself, too. Now I’m doing it again. Thank you for that.”

She stands up. “They will remember you, in my kingdom. Just as they will remember Priscilla.”

Priscilla? That poor girl was exiled for her own good. She never meant harm to anyone—has this corpse-girl gone and—

“They will worship Quelaag’s sister as a living god, but _your_ spirits they will venerate in eternity. You will both have cathedrals devoted to you. Hymns. I will dance with Gwyn, and I will take his power, as I’ve taken the power of everyone in this world, and use it to link my fire. Don’t despair. Your golden age will return. I will make it with your souls.” Her pink tongue slides over sunken lips.

I stare at her. And then I begin to laugh.

She does not understand. All this time, she has never understood.

She thinks that to link the flame means to become a Lord like my father. She thinks it will give her godly power. She does not know that to link the fire means to be consumed by it utterly, to be a sacrifice in soul, body, and mind. She does not know she is taking all this power to the grave.

I am still laughing when her blade cuts into me again.

You are no god, wretch. You utter fool. You are _meat._ You are kindling. You are dead substance. You are a sack of bone and skin stretched over a core of clammy, _disgusting_ darkness. You are not my equal. You are weak and twisted and you are our _enemy,_ our oldest, and you will die, I may die, but you will die with me—

She will do it. I know it now, with utter certainty. I can see it stretching before me like a moonlit thread. She will not be able to resist testing herself against Father. She will learn the moves of his dance. And then she will throw herself, naïve child, into the flame.

It is _done, _then_._ My work is complete. I have done it, I have done it, I have done it.

The world will be reborn. The undead will disappear, and the people will thrive. The sun will shine again. Without me.

I go to you now, Father. I have ensured your legacy. I go to you, Ileuad. I go to you, Quelaag. Mother. My sister. My brother. I will see you soon.

The twisted human root raises her blade one last time. I laugh again. I made you, wretch. Molded you to be my Father reborn.

Or did I choose to make you _me_?

No matter. The blade swings. My vision blurs.

Something reaches toward me, a dark, wet thing from below, and I reach back. I let it claim me.

A light goes out.


End file.
